Zapped!!!

Question : What do you think the Fastest Retail Website for American Consumers is ?

I would’nt be surprised if your answer is Amazon. But you are worng. The correct answer is Zappos.com. The emergence of Zappos from a tiny shoe retail store to one of America’s largest online business has been one of the most startling sucess stories for online businesses. The site, which was founded in 1999 had just $1.6 million in gross sales in 2000. This has risen to $600 million in revenue in 2006.

Zappos is derived from the word Zapatos which means shoes in spanish. Apart from shoes Zappos very recently started off with selling ladies and gents handbags. A part of its revenue model also includes in running ad campaingns in the form of banners on different sites and an affiliate program where webmasters get paid for refering customers to zappos. With about 4 milllion customers the company had about 1% of the Total american population buy something from them.

Being a Web retailer only means that IT plays a huge role. Part of the reason for their business success has been because they have managed to use power of IT in a smart and efficient manner. They follow a policy which states that IT should prove useful to the business and not to the developers.

Zappos doesnt manufacture shoes but does develop its own software.The compnay has a small team of developers and has built the majority of the tools using open source software like PERL, MySQL, Linux and Apache. This includes the website , Warehouse management system , Customer service tools etc. Zappos proves to be another example of how business can succeed by employing the open source movement.

It will be interesting to keep a watch on the strategies that Zappos will employ in the coming years to reach greater heights. All the Best !